Jim McGill 02 The Hangman's Companion Page 9

  “Paris?”

  “Yeah. He was going to London with the president for the G8 meeting, and then a job came up in France.”

  “Who’s protecting him?” Deke asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sweetie said. “I imagine Patti will find someone to tag along.”

  Deke frowned.

  Sweetie smiled. “You’ve got to realize something, Deke. Jim McGill is a sweet, gentle man, but if he’d been born sixty years earlier, he’d have brought John Dillinger in alive, without a shot being fired. He’s going to be okay until you’re up and running again.”

  Deke’s grimace said he wasn’t reassured. Sweetie chose not to argue the point.

  She just asked, “Which way’s the kitchen?”

  11

  Musette Ky extended a plate of Chocolate Marthas to Sweetie as the two women sat at her kitchen table. After Sweetie had consumed one, and her hostess had done likewise, she wondered if it would be rude to ask if she could take the other six mini-cupcakes home. Maybe give one to Putnam. Put the rest in her fridge and make them last all week. Wouldn’t be gluttony that way. She could have her cake and her salvation, too. The green ice tea with mint and honey that Ms. Ky served was also sinfully good.

  Sweetie’s tingling taste buds made her reflect on the nature of sin. The old counterculture advice was: If it feels good, do it. But the Church’s point of view always seemed to be: If it feels good, don’t even think about it. Who had taken the fun out of being Catholic? When had that happened? Couldn’t have been at the start. Jesus went to wedding parties. If the wine ran low, he took a miracle out of his pocket and made more.

  The pleasantries having been observed, Musette Ky got down to business. It turned out her story involved jeopardy not just for herself but also for a member of the clergy. Questions of faith were also involved. But she began by saying, “I promised Donald I would never tell anyone what I am about to tell you.”

  Sweetie had to ask, “Why would you break a promise to your son?”

  “It was made under duress. At the time it looked like … like Donald might die.” She pushed that grim memory aside and shrugged. “Also, I am far from a perfect mother.”

  Sweetie reflected on that. She couldn’t imagine there being a better Secret Service agent to protect Jim McGill than Deke Ky. She didn’t want to learn so much about the Kys, mother and son, that it would make it impossible for Deke to resume his job.

  “Do you want me to continue,” Musette asked, “or should I find help elsewhere?”

  Despite her misgivings, Sweetie was never one to back down.

  “I’ll help you,” she said. “Deke isn’t blood, but for Jim and me he is family.”

  Musette Ky inclined her head in gratitude, and offered the plate of Chocolate Marthas to Sweetie, who took one and listened closely.

  “Donald has a cousin who is more like a brother to him. His name is Francis Nguyen. Reverend Francis Nguyen.”

  Musette took a small photographic print out of a pocket and handed it to Sweetie. It was a portrait of a young man wearing a black suit and a Roman collar. Francis Nguyen looked smart, serene, and young enough to be an altar boy.

  “Francis is the child of my younger sister, Sylvie. After the war, they made their way to a refugee camp in Thailand. Francis was only four when my sister died there. I brought him to this country. He lived with Donald and me, and when the time came I paid for his years at the seminary.”

  Musette helped herself to another Chocolate Martha. She offered the plate to Sweetie again, but Sweetie was still hoping for leftovers and declined.

  “I never thought I would love anyone as much as Donald, but there were times I thought I might love Francis more.”

  Sweetie noticed that Ms. Ky didn’t look around to see if Deke might be nearby before she spoke, and she didn’t lower her voice…but then she had said she wasn’t a perfect mother.

  Musette said, “Our Lord’s grace shines so clearly through Francis, there are times he makes me want to fall to my knees.”

  “How does Deke feel about that?” Sweetie asked.

  Ms. Ky smiled. “If anything, Donald loves Francis even more than I do. But there are those who do not approve of him.”

  Someone who didn’t approve of a priest? Could be a parishioner with a gripe. If she hadn’t seen Francis Nguyen’s photo, it might have been—God help us—a parent with the most horrible of suspicions. But no way was someone with that face a child molester. If she was wrong about that, she’d have to hang it up. Sweetie zeroed in on what she considered a more likely target.

  “Would Francis’s critics be his brothers in the Church?” she asked.

  Musette nodded. “Francis believes his ministry is to the faithful not the hierarchy. He will not marry gay couples, but he will bless their relationships and ask the Lord to guide them in their thoughts and deeds. He will also give Holy Communion to any Catholic—even politicians who refuse to follow the bishop’s dictates on abortion.”

  “So he’s openly disobedient,” Sweetie said. “How is his bishop taking that?”

  “Bishop O’Menehy has threatened to remove Francis from the priesthood, but he hasn’t acted because he’s afraid Francis’s parish, and perhaps others, would rebel. Francis finds the thought that he might cause a schism, even a minor one, unbearable. It causes him as much pain as the idea he might be expelled from the priesthood.”

  Sweetie considered what she’d been told. Father Francis Nguyen was experiencing a terrible personal crisis, but so far she hadn’t heard anything about the person Musette Ky thought had targeted her for death. Then things clicked into place for her.

  Ms. Ky wasn’t worried about the bad guys coming back to take another crack at Deke. Nor was she primarily concerned for her own welfare. She feared for her nephew, the young priest who sometimes eclipsed her own son in her feelings.

  Why would that be … unless Father Nguyen also had learned something about the criminal and his plans. And how could that have…

  Good Lord. Had Father Nguyen heard the bad guy’s confession?

  Maybe the creep who’d shot Deke had even spilled his guts to the priest.

  If that were the case, in addition to all his problems with the hierarchy, the priest would also have to protect the identity of the assassin who had shot his cousin.

  Paris

  12

  After leaving Pruet’s office, McGill had Gabbi give him a motor tour of central Paris. He saw many of the iconic sights: the Eiffel Tower, just down the street from where Pruet labored; the Arc de Triomphe; Notre Dame Cathedral. But for the president’s henchman it was more than a sightseeing jaunt. He was learning a new beat just as he had when he first moved to Washington, DC. Only this time he had to try to memorize street signs written in French: rues, allées, ruelles.

  Thank goodness French and English shared boulevards and avenues.

  Still, McGill asked Gabbi to help him begin to acquire an elementary grasp of the host language. He started with obvious things, like the vehicle in which they were riding.

  “How do you say car?” he asked.

  “Voiture.”

  He also learned to count one through twenty. The colors red, white, blue and black. He learned the Seine was a fleuve not a riviere, the latter being more akin to a stream. After making a few more additions to his new vocabulary, he returned to an earlier matter.

  “You want to tell me now, what was the terrible thing Pruet did? His faux pas, to use the vernacular.”

  Gabbi smiled at him. “You have a very nice accent for someone who’s been in France less than a day.”

  “Thank you. My mother is a voice teacher. She taught me how to listen closely. There, I’ve shared a secret with you, so how about opening up?”

  Gabbi had a good ear, too. There was just a bit of edge to McGill’s voice—and he could, she supposed, have her posted somewhere a lot less appealing than Paris.

  “Yves Pruet became a figure of renown, and a fair bit of loathing, when h
e sent Alain Gautier to prison.”

  McGill had never heard the name before. If he paid little attention to American politics, he paid even less to foreign wrangling. But he’d been attentive to both Gabbi and Pruet when they had explained the French legal system to him.

  “Didn’t I hear that investigating magistrates only refer cases to courts for trial? They don’t render verdicts themselves.”

  “That’s right,” Gabbi said, sparing him a quick glance. The late afternoon traffic was increasing, growing more demanding of a driver’s attention. “But what neither of us said, I guess because we both take it for granted, is when someone like Pruet refers a case for trial, there’s a ninety-five percent chance the verdict will be guilty.”

  As a former cop, that pleased McGill.

  As a PI working for Glen Kinnard, he wasn’t so sure he liked the idea.

  “Okay, so who’s this Alain Gautier?”

  “He was a former interior minister, the official who runs all the cop shops in France.”

  McGill whistled softly. “What’d he do?”

  “Dipped his beak into the public trough. The scandal reminded me of the way things work in Chicago. But not even the boys at City Hall grab as much as Gautier did.”

  McGill thought about that for a moment. That had to be what Patti was talking about when she’d said Pruet was honest to a fault. And politically inconvenient.

  “So the Gautier case put the kibosh on Pruet’s professional reputation?”

  “Made him a pariah. He terrifies much of the government elite. There are lots of people just waiting for the opportunity to knife him.”

  Maybe more than metaphorically, McGill thought. That would explain the presence of bodyguard Odo Sacripant at Pruet’s side. It might also account for the magistrate’s somber mood and unkempt appearance.

  The next stop on McGill’s train of thought darkened his own outlook.

  “An opportunity to knife the guy?” he asked. “Like handing him the investigation of the death of Thierry Duchamp and Glen Kinnard’s role in it?”

  Gabbi stopped the car. Traffic had backed up for no reason visible to McGill.

  She looked at him and said, “That’s the way I see it. From what I’ve been able to find out, this is the first case Pruet has worked since he nailed Gautier.”

  McGill said, “It’s obvious what happens to Pruet if he clears Glen Kinnard: Everybody in France hates him, not just the pols. But what’s the downside if he throws the book at Kinnard?”

  Traffic began to move and Gabbi put her eyes back on the road.

  “Personally, not much, if Kinnard deserves to go to jail. But Pruet has a reputation for unquestioned honesty. It would be very hard for him to sacrifice that for political expediency. In either case, though, if Kinnard gets a long sentence, it could hurt relations between France and the United States, which are better than they have been for years.”

  McGill sighed. Now, he understood why Pruet was gloomy.

  “Having me around only complicates things, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  Gabbi shot him a quick look. Telling him: C’mon, you can see what it does.

  And with that bit of prompting, McGill did.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I might be a big help. Kinnard gets it in the head, both France and the U.S. can point the finger at me for meddling.”

  “Très bon,” Gabbi said. “You like Kinnard?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “So you stub a toe. Render yourself hors de combat. Leave the field to someone else.”

  McGill told her, “I’ve never been a quitter,”

  Especially when a man’s daughter asked him to help her dad.

  It was too easy to identify with something like that.

  Gabbi said, “Okay, as long as you know the risks.”

  McGill was sure he was only beginning to recognize the risks.

  As if to confirm that point, Gabbi’s mobile phone trilled; the call was from Pruet.

  “M’sieur le magistrat says you can see Kinnard now,” Gabbi told him.

  Rue de Lille, Paris

  13

  Gabbi pulled into a parking spot in front of a well-kept residential building. There was a doorman out front. It was the kind of neighborhood, from what McGill could see, where a doorman was a standard amenity. Only this guy looked like he could be Odo Sacripant’s kid brother, and he’d be just as happy to plant a foot in your backside as open a door for you.

  The other thing that caught McGill’s attention was the parking spot Gabbi took was the last vacant space on the block. Right in front of the place where they would have their meeting. Didn’t seem like a coincidence. The tough guy had kept it clear for them.

  But when he opened the car door for McGill he didn’t say bienvenue. What he did was give McGill a once over to see if he was carrying. Probably wanted to frisk him, too. But his orders must not have allowed that. Or he got the vibe from McGill that it wouldn’t be a good idea.

  Gabbi handed her car keys to him and said something in French. She got a nod in response but not even a hint of a smile. McGill was about to open the door to the building when Gabbi restrained him. They waited for the doorman to do it. He took his time.

  Once inside, McGill asked, “You think he used to be a waiter?”

  Gabbi had another idea. “Maybe he was a fan of Thierry Duchamp.”

  McGill asked, “And he knows why we’re here?”

  “That or he used to be a waiter.”

  Gabbi pressed the call button for the elevator and when the car arrived it held two large plainclothes cops. French elevators being what they were, the space left for McGill and Gabbi was the approximate size of a phone booth. Under any other circumstances, McGill wouldn’t want to explain having such intimate contact with the RSO to his wife. He thought about the formula for calculating earned run averages until they reached the third floor and disembarked.

  Their police escorts got off with them in a hallway. An apartment door opened and they joined two more cops who waited in a comfortably furnished living room with breathing space and elbow room for all, including Glen Kinnard, who took one look at McGill and said, “I never thought I’d be so glad to see you.”

  14

  McGill went for a more gracious hello. He extended his hand and said, “I was sorry to hear of Suzanne’s passing.”

  His condolence was sincere and it disarmed Kinnard. He shook McGill’s hand.

  “Yeah, thanks. Thanks for coming, too.”

  “Your daughter’s responsible for that,” McGill said. He looked at Gabbi and asked, “You think these gentlemen could give us a little privacy?”

  She made an inquiry of the oldest cop. He shook his head. She invoked Pruet’s name. The cops all scowled upon hearing it, but they withdrew, a pair of them taking up position outside each of the two doors to the room. Gabbi closed each door firmly. Then she raised a finger to her lips, momentarily postponing further conversation between McGill and Kinnard.

  She took two small devices out of a pocket and turned them on. One produced white noise; the other activated an MP3 file of Bob Marley’s Legend album. She cranked it up. Then she took two chairs from a table and set them facing each other in the middle of the room. She gestured to McGill and Kinnard to be seated. When they were, she leaned in and said quietly, “The French love to snoop.”

  She stepped back, giving the two men their privacy.

  Kinnard was looking at Gabbi; McGill looked at him.

  His hair had gone gray, but was still full and worn in a buzz cut. His face had more lines but no fat. His body showed no signs of softening either. Kinnard still looked like what McGill had always taken him to be: a hard mean SOB.

  But Kinnard had put in twenty-five years on the job and—the excessive force allegations notwithstanding—no hint of corruption had ever tainted Kinnard. That in itself distinguished him from a lot of Chicago coppers. As to Emilie LaBelle’s assertion that her father had acquired a semblance of humanity, Mc
Gill would have to see about that.

  Almost as if Kinnard had read his thoughts, he turned toward McGill and said in a soft voice, “You know, for most of my life I’d have thought a woman who looked like her was good for only one thing. Now, I’m a little smarter. If she’s helping you, I feel better about things.”

  McGill nodded and said, “Tell me what happened.”

  Kinnard did, repeating the details of the story Emilie had told him, and then he added a few more. He was about to drop Suzanne’s ashes into the Seine as she had asked him to do, but at the last minute he changed his mind.

  “I wasn’t going to ignore Suzanne’s wishes; I just wanted to join her. Have my ashes go into the river with hers. When I die, I mean. So I thought what I’d do was take Suzi’s urn back home. Then I thought, no, I’d have some funeral guy here hold them for me. Have Emilie bring my urn here after I was gone. I’ve patched things up enough with her, I was sure she’d do that.”

  Kinnard was silently explaining his new idea to his late wife’s spirit when the loudmouthed couple came along and the guy started beating on the woman.

  “And being who you are, you couldn’t walk away?” McGill said.

  Kinnard glared at him, the momentary détente between the two of them gone.

  “No, I couldn’t. You wouldn’t have either. I read about you catching those creeps who did the president’s first husband. Thought to myself that prick McGill did a righteous job, and when you told the press all those assholes should be strapped to gurneys I was so tickled I wanted to buy you a beer.” The smile fell from Kinnard’s face. A sheen of tears made his eyes glisten. “You got married just about the time Suzi got her diagnosis. Made me wonder about people’s luck. But I wouldn’t have traded any one of those last days with Suzi for anything.”

  Kinnard covered his face with his hands.

  McGill told him, “I wouldn’t have walked away either.”

  It was another reason he’d taken the case.

  Kinnard squeegeed the tears from his eyes.